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Drinking Bourbon with Dierks Bentley
Country music star Dierks Bentley celebrated the release of his Row 94 Bourbon with a party in Nashville and stories of his fondest whiskey memories.
For Dierks Bentley, music and whiskey are forever intertwined. He remembers falling in love with Jim Beam because it’s what singer-songwriter Hank Williams Jr drank. In this way, his music and whiskey influences are one in the same.
“When you really love an artist that much, you start digging into who they are and what they do, and that’s what he drank, so that’s what we drank,” he says.
Bentley is on the third floor of his Nashville bar, Whiskey Row, seated on a faded black leather couch. He sometimes closes his eyes when speaking, searching for the right words the way a blender might when delivering tasting notes.
In a matter of moments, Whiskey Row will fill up with eager drinkers here to celebrate the release of Row 94, Bentley’s new Bourbon made in collaboration with Kentucky’s Green River Distilling. No city personifies the relationship between music and drinking quite like Nashville, and it is fitting that Bentley, who has Whiskey Row locations in Scottsdale and Gilbert, Arizona as well as Denver, Colorado, is finally able to serve his own whiskey at his own bar.
“It’s part of the culture,” he says of the link between country music and whiskey. “It’s something that I know really well as a consumer and as a singer. Probably too much of a consumer back in the early days, but I know my audience, and it’s just part of our thing.”
Those early days, when Bentley was being scolded by his father for mixing his whiskey with Coke, shaped Row 94. Bentley was adamant that the whiskey had four words on its label – Kentucky straight Bourbon whiskey – since that’s what Jim Beam is. He also wanted it to be at least four years old, and under US$40. While he has huge love for Nashville, and the state of Tennessee, he views Kentucky as Bourbon’s birthplace.
“Nashville is where country music’s made, Pennsylvania is where great Martin guitars are made, and Kentucky is where Bourbon is made,” he said. “I know it’s made in other places, but to me, it has to be Kentucky.”
Road tested
Bentley’s drinking experiences, like his musical ones, are greatly influenced by his time on the road. He describes backstage bars that had 60 to 70 people present.
“For me, we bring the party,” he said. “Our job is to create a little small city, not only on stage for the fans, but backstage. It’s very important to me.”
During the Covid-19 pandemic, when touring was halted, he enjoyed a period of sobriety, which led him to form a greater appreciation for whiskey.
“When something goes from a ‘get to’ to a ‘got to,’ it takes a little fun out of it,” he says. “And when I started drinking again, the social part of it became fun again. For the first time in my life, I actually took a sniff of Bourbon instead of throwing it down as quick as I could, I started getting into podcasts and reading books. It was kind of like when I discovered country music, you just start going deeper and deeper.”
While cocktails were on serve at Whiskey Row that night, Bentley prefers his pours neat, calling Row 94 a serious whiskey that doesn’t take itself too serious. He understands that he is entering a crowded landscape of country musicians with whiskey brands, joining the likes of Brad Paisley and Chris Stapleton, but is committed to doing the work to separate his from other celebrity labels.
“It’s willingness to work,” he says of what it takes to be a celebrity brand that succeeds. “Willingness to meet distributors, to meet the bartenders, go on-premise, go to retail, go personally out to Walmart to put the time in. It’s about having something you believe in, like an album that you make. And this is what we do in country music.”
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